Aleksandr Lukashenko meets with Supreme Court Chairman Valentin Sukalo

The legal reform will improve the judicial system and speed up the delivery of justice, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said as he met with Chairman of the Supreme Court Valentin Sukalo on 9 December.

Aleksandr Lukashenko and Valentin Sukalo discussed the reformation of the judicial system.

“All the decisions to establish a new judicial system have been passed. The system will become operational on 1 January 2014,” the President said. The head of state asked Valentin Sukalo about the progress in reforming the system: “We should make everything crystal-clear here. I would like to know if anything bothers you at the moment. I would like to know about the moods in the Supreme Court and the Supreme Economic Court.” The work should be done in a very careful and delicate way, the President added.

“The judicial system and the work of judges are often criticized by us and by people. However, we know how justice is delivered in other countries. I am not talking about our neighbors, but the world in general. The judicial system of our country is beyond the praise,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

“Yet, people complain, so we need to be very careful while establishing the new judicial system. Most importantly, we should not offend the judges who will work tomorrow, and we should not make the things worse,” the head of state said.

“We made up our mind and we need to go this way. This is a well-considered decision that meets the interests of our state,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

The President repeated that the essence of the reform is to improve the quality, availability, integrity and openness of the legal system and to speed up the delivery of justice.

Valentin Sukalo said that the work is underway on the major organizational and HR aspects of the reform. In his words, the work to establish the new system is in full swing.